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Site Visit for SFSA at Anthology Deptford Foundry

It was an exciting time last week for SFSA Director, Nichole Herbert Wood who was visiting the construction site of Anthology’s Deptford Foundry 316 unit development scheme, Arklow Road, Lewisham, and home to Second Floor Studios new 80 + purpose built studios due to open late autumn 2018.

no format Gallery Past Exhibitions & Ethos

Places, Faces, Things as a premise willingly generalises the notion of *subject* (the great vessel of meaning; i.e.: what's it about?) playfully undermining their promise of significance in order to focus instead on the poetics of making, not making,
remaking and revisiting, being too busy, doing what you can; the vitality of the daily practice that can sometimes seem to play a risky game of undoing between the heady demands of *ideas*.

Uncommon Ground

A group of 7 graduates from Plymouth College of Art will be exhibiting their award winning work from their final year degree show

A group of 7 graduates from Plymouth College of Art will be exhibiting their award winning work from their final year degree show between 9th November to 12th November 2017 at No Format Gallery, Deptford.

The graduates studied a BA Hons programme in Painting, Drawing and Printmaking at Plymouth College of Art, which is one of only two independent art colleges in the UK. The College is playing an increasingly important part in showcasing Plymouth as a centre
for art and culture, not only in the South West, but also nationally and internationally. This new BA programme which has only been running for four years, is one of the few courses in this country that offer a materials based and process-driven education,
leading to graduates that are not only academically qualified, but also practically experienced. Through this dynamic programme of study of both materials and techniques the students are encouraged to develop professional practice that includes specialist
technical and critical study across a wide range of painting, drawing and printmaking.

The BA Programme culminates in a final year degree show that celebrates three years hard work and showcases the emerging talent to the wider art world. The graduate show took place at Plymouth College of Art 9th-22nd June this year and will be coming to Deptford
in November, with the long-term aim of forming new collaborations and future project exchanges between artists in London and the South West.

New work from a shifting collective of artists with overlapping concerns. Supposedly Predictable Phenomena looks at themes of sequence and consequence. Apparently linear processes; geological, psychological and physical, that are rendered unpredictable and
essentially chaotic due to their inherent and entangled sensitivity.

Wednesday 13th to Friday 15th September. General Opening times, 1-6.30pm or by appointment

Saturday 16th September: Special event = Artists talk and in conversation with independent curator and former gallerist and Writer Laurent DeLaye, 5.30-6.30pm, followed with a buffet and drinks to 8pm.

Rosalind Davis is an artist whose central concern is the transformation of space through the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture and installation.

For her solo show at no format Gallery, Davis will create a series of flexible spatial architectural installations; reconfiguring and re constructing modular steel forms, creating a multi-dimensional material built environments incorporating thread, luminous
perspex sheets and painted canvases. Playing with the modular nature of the work and the temporal aspects of transformation the installations create illusions within the space which the viewer can both navigate and compose for themselves.

Biography
Rosalind Davis graduated from The Royal College of Art (2005) and Chelsea College of Art (2003). Davis has exhibited nationally and internationally in a wide range of galleries and has had a number of solo shows in London: the Bruce Castle Museum (2013); John
Jones Project Space; Julian Hartnoll Gallery (2009); The Residence Gallery (2007) and The Stephen Lawrence Centre. Selected group exhibitions have been at the Courtauld Institute; Arthouse1; Standpoint Gallery; Transition Gallery; The Roundhouse; Phoenix Brighton;
APT Gallery; the Lion and Lamb Gallery; The ING Discerning Eye; the Lynn Painters Stainers Prize. Her work is held in a number of private and public collections.

Davis is the Curator at Collyer Bristow Gallery and has co-directed and developed two innovative arts organizations; Zeitgeist Arts Projects (ZAP 2012-15) and Core Gallery (2009-11,) based in South East London. Previous co-curatorial projects have been at
Standpoint Gallery, Arthouse1, Geddes Gallery and with ZAP at Bond House Gallery (ASC). Davis is co-author of ‘What they didn’t teach you at art school’ commissioned by Octopus Books which is internationally distributed and she lectures at universities, galleries
and organisations across the country.

Nicholas Dietrich It’s like trying to describe an elephant by only looking at its tail

12 - 22 July 2017

Wednesday - Saturday 12:00 - 6:00pm

Private View Sat 15 July, 6:00 - 8:00pm

500 word stream of consciousness philosophy written on a train.

I am not interested in theory or intellectual self-indulgence. I am interested in my experience of the world and the thinking that arises from it: hope, expectations, failure, winning, never feeling that you have arrived, neurosis, dissatisfaction, the
feeling of sun on your body, walking through the forest, riding a motorbike, love, feeling others’ pain, aches and pains, delicious pleasures, jealousy, feeling hopeless, feeling confident, restricted, free, not wanting anyone near you, wanting people near
you, not wanting an online presence, wanting to work, but only exactly how you want to. Every real thought, feeling and emotion that is happening all the time, right now.

How can an artwork embody everything at once? It can’t, it can only reflect back, maybe that’s why there are so many mirrors in art. As soon as something specific is presented, it vastly narrows down possible interpretations, unless the forms you use are
signs for something else. If it’s about everything, it’s probably about nothing and that’s ok. Something universal, like the colour green.

The man-made form is a symbol for production, for striving and purpose giving. Endeavour not only to literally keep you alive, but providing a reason to be. Dedicating yourself wholly to something has a positive and negative side. You have justification,
but you’re missing out on everything else, like the classical musician or the surgeon are totally consumed by their practice.

For me, the mechanical form is the best example of a man-made form: extracted from the ground, the material re-shaped for a specific purpose. Designed, experimented upon, built on other people’s achievements, one mechanism upon another, like a watch. A
production line is built up on incredible scale, working in harmony to produce, just like we do, to produce everything we have, everything we use. For me it represents the process, not the end product as the significant part, as that is daily life, running
forward, for better or worse. The end product is too static, too limited and ordinary - our usual experience of an object. I want objects that change, I want motion, to capture something in mid-process; it’s more poetic, transitional, free, floating, ungraspable.
That’s why I draw it from video.

I first became interested in industrial buildings in Hull, carcasses of what once was. Exploring, photographing, experiencing, no paintings needed to be made (the moment was enough), but I didn’t know that then. Old industry that got us to where we are
now, I don’t care about the specifics of it, only how it can be experienced now. I don’t care about technology now, as I use it every day, I don’t need to know what’s inside a laptop, it’s a tool, you don’t think about it once you have the right tool.

Because I’m interested in process, I need to keep changing what I’m doing, the subject matter must be different every time, the emphasis different every time, the mood, energy.

As a painter you are constantly wrestling with nothingness and inevitably end up getting pulled toward the ether.

It’s like trying to describe an elephant by only looking at its tail.

Nicholas Dietrich May 2017

Drawing Connections

Daniela White

Derval Tubridy
Adjacency [the quality or state of being adjacent, or of lying near, bordering]

What are the implications of a Hard Border for Northern Ireland? How will increased border controls affect the peace process? Adjacency takes materials from the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday 1972 to examine contested spaces in the context
of ‘adjacency’ understood as ‘lying near, bordering’.

In a series of paintings and mixed media works Adjacency examines the uncertain relation between topography and cartography, between narrative and the event, within contested boundaries and identities destabilised by an uncertain Brexit.